A Public Betrayed: An Inside Look at Japanese Media Atrocities and Their Warnings to the West

by Adam Gamble, Takesato Watanabe

Reveals how the Japanese media have dangerously overstepped their boundaries and distorted-even wiped out-honest news in favour of government propaganda. And worse, Japanese citizens are frequently persecuted and threatened by the very institution they turn to for truth.

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction, History, Business, Politics

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Adam Gamble, is a writer, a photographer, and a publisher. He is the author of many books in the Good Night Books series, In the Footsteps of Thoreau, and A Public Betrayed. He lives in Sandwich, MA.

Reviews

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads like an expanded magazine article - with the pluses and minuses which that implies. It is, for all that, a hard-hitting and generally persuasive critique of the Japanese media.

The opening three chapters look at the Japanese style of government (from a Van Wolferen perspective; one I am sympathetic to);at the mainstream Japanese press and their press clubs - which Gamble shows to be a thoroughly corrupt system whereby the mainstream media is little more than a tool of the powers-that-be; and the weekly magazines/tabloids (Shukanshi: e.g. http://www.weeklypost.com/110916jp/in...), which is the primary focus of the book.

These weeklies permeate the consciousness of the Japanese consumer - who not only read these magazines by the millions, but are constantly bombarded by their sensationalistic headlines on trains, busses, in other newspapers, etc. They are something of a cross between high-quality political journalism (think Time or Newsweek), occasionally hard-hitting investigative journalism, scandal-mongering (a sort of collective media Ijime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijime), extensive gossip, and erotica (mostly softcore). In fact, in reading this -- it appears to me that HuffPost is a (slightly high-brow) version of Shukanshi, and I wouldn't be in the least surprised to learn that Shukanshi had been a conscious model for Arianna Huffington.

One can stop here, at p. 119.

The following chapters present a set of case-studies: terrorizing the victims of terrorism (a-la-Richard Jewel); Anti-semitism in a country without Jews (and holocaust denial in Japan - which is very widespread); smearing a Buddhist leader; whitewashing the Nanjing Massacre -- which has some of the most depressing descriptions of the event -- drawn from this book: http://books.google.com/books?id=_H0J... and, finally, a chapter on the persecution/denial of the 'comfort women' "controversy" -- only a controversy, of course, in the distorted mind of the (frequently) ultra-rightest Japanese media.

All in all, a very depressing, and generally quite persuasive portrait of modern Japan.

My only complaints is that the author is occasionally given to excesses of expression - although, I must say, by the time I finished his chapters on Nanjing and on the 'comfort women', I couldn't really blame him.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Public Betrayed?

Just the title was a turn off-- I didn't want to read this book, I've so many others I'd prefer, so asked the man who recommended it for *one* good chapter. He said *all* the chapters were good, but try chapter 5: Anti-Semitism in a Country without Jews. I can’t go into detail without spoiler alerts. Suffice to say I was sufficiently gripped with the journalistic atrocities recounted and proceeded to the next chapter about a false scandal drummed up against Daisaku Ikeda which lead to a drawn out lawsuit and more information about a country with insignificant libel laws and questionable journalistic standards.

I didn’t have the stamina to read about the Nanjing massacre (Chapter 7) so went back to chapter one which sets the stage for the book: an American language study of Japanese media, its betrayal of its people, and a warning to other nations about whitewashing history. Many interviews were conducted and a survey taken of 100 Japanese citizens between the ages of 18 and 70, in Shinjuku, Tokyo and Ginza regarding their impression of newspapers, weekly magazines and their happiness with Japanese governance. Special consideration was taken regarding meaning and nuance with the translation.

Atrocities committed against Korean girls during World War II, the real stories behind the Sarin–Gas Attack and Olympic bombing in Atlanta in 1996 are discussed in detail to illustrate journalism that repeats unfounded claims from local police authorities, defames the character of victims and accuses, in Richard Jewell’s case, heroes who put their own lives in danger to protect the public.

In America we know what we’re getting with the National Enquirer and can find well researched reporting on public broadcasting and one or two cable networks, but our situation is not unlike the situation in one of the largest industrial democratic societies in the world where news is deliberately ‘sexed up’ to sell. Journalism is big business, journalists are ‘in bed with’ large corporate interests and the public should remain vigilant in the face of Fox News and even The New York Times. (Remember Judith Miller?) It is a rare circumstance that we find brave reporting. The Internet has a lot to offer but certainly not all of it is reputable.

This book is so well written, the subjects so illuminating, even the appendices are a must read.

[Gabby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met one of the editors on a job site. He asked me to translate several text from Japanese to Englisht. I didn't know it was for this book. Understanding human behavior is a difficult task, but one worth taking on.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Gamble, 2004

This book covers the subject of the Japanese media, usually in a rather negative light. A couple chapters pertain to the other material in this portion of my web site, and that's a chapter on the Nanking Massacre and a chapter on Comfort Women, so that's the two chapters I'll review here.

Chapter 7 is called "Whitewashing the Nanjing Massacre and Attacking a Genuine Journalist." (Nanjing is another way of saying Nanking.) The author's position on the subject is made immediately clear: "The size and brutality of the massacre make it one of the most important stories of the century, not simply for the Japanese or the Chinese but for all people. It represents one of the most horrendous examples of human barbarity ever recorded."

The author writes that just after the event the Japanese government put a blackout on information about what happened. The blackout lasted around a decade, so those left in Japan while the war raged on were unaware of what their own soldiers were doing in China.

The author then writes that even today right-wing Japanese publishers and writers try to downplay what happened or even say the entire event was fictitious. The attack itself happened in 1937 during the Japanese invasion of China. The raping and the violence were not limited to the city itself, of course, but included what happened on the way there and near there. The author says "...the soldiers indulged in a campaign of mass murder, rape, torture and exploitation," some of which was due to the racial prejudice of the Japanese against the Chinese.

The Japanese soldiers were led to believe that the Chinese were on the level of animals (something which many Americans believed applied to the Japanese soldiers themselves once our war with Japan started.) Another reason for what they did was the way the soldiers themselves were treated, often beaten, and a "transfer of aggression" happened- the slightly stronger beat on the slightly weaker and so on down the line.

The author says that the Japanese military "ran amok" in the city from December 13 through February of the next year. One thing that complicated matters was that many Chinese soldiers took off their uniforms and tried to blend in with the civilians, something which the Japanese used as an excuse to execute large numbers of the men.

(As far as evidence from the event goes, there are diaries, personal witnesses and even video footage so the fact that the event did occur is not something that is really open to debate. The book has a lot of the diary information and it does not make for pretty reading, to say the least.)

The author talks about how some reporters/writers material on the massacre was attacked by right-wing groups in Japan that hold to a revisionist view of history. (Even some established political figures question the history of the massacre).The people who make such attacks are not always hack writers, either, as the author points out one of the people includes a professor at Tokyo University.

The author then talks about the argument over exactly how many Chinese were killed by the Japanese soldiers during the massacre, and how some revisionists try to claim the number was 10% or less of the generally accepted figure. The result of all the controversy, the author notes, is that many Japanese today believe the entire issue of the Nanking massacre is one that is still subject to scholarly debate rather than something that has pretty well been solidly established.

The author says that there is a growing nationalism in Japan, and that writers, scholars, etc, who hold views that the far right doesn't like can end up being harassed, ranging from having sound trucks part near their homes or work and blasting out right-wing slogans to even being killed.

Chapter 8 of his book is entitled "Attacking Former Sex Slaves: A Second Rape" and deals with the issue of comfort women. The author starts by saying there were 80,000 to 200,000 young girls involved in the comfort woman program and that it is still a very emotionally charged issue today.

The author makes a clear designation between "brothels" and "comfort stations", point out that, in a brothel, mostly it's women doing something voluntarily, where in the comfort stations it was almost entirely women being forced to have sex with the soldiers.

80% of the sex slaves were Korean and others came from Taiwan, China and the Philippines. 80% were between the ages of 14 and 18. The soldiers targeted the poorest and least-educated girls that they could because their disappearance would cause the least problems.

One of the main reasons the comfort stations were established was to try to control the spread of STDs among the soldiers which could have an adverse effect on their ability to fight. It was also done to help soldier morale. The military had an idea that soldiers who were sexually satisfied fought better. Racism against peoples of countries that the military invaded was another contributing factor to the comfort stations. The system was supposed to help control the number of rapes of civilians (although raping them where they lived and raping them after they had been captured and brought to a comfort station is an incredibly fine line of difference).

Although most Japanese military records were destroyed at the end of the war, those that exist listed the women as "war supplies." The author also notes that many of the sex slaves were beaten, bled to death, suffered miscarriages, caught diseases or committed suicide. If they survived they were sometimes left abandoned when the Japanese military pulled out of an area.

The author notes that various prime ministers themselves have apologized for what happened, but the Diet (Japan's version of a Congress) has apologized. Some money through a non-government group has been paid as compensation, but the author holds that it's more a publicity stunt than any real attempt to make up for what was done.

The author does point out that the U.S. itself did not take up the issue of comfort women at the end of the war or in the war trials. (The U.S. also covered up the Unit 731 offenses and other information).

Various conservative groups in Japan downplay the comfort women issue just as they downplay or deny the Nanjing Massacre.

Finally, the author points out that sex slavery is quite alive in the U.S., involving major cities and under-age girls and young women from dozens of countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc. The number brought into this country as sex slaves runs around 20,000 per year or more.

The rest of the book deals with matters not related to the World War II Japanese military so I've not commented on those parts of the book.

[Chris Aylott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gamble and Watanabe make a vigorous case against the exaggerations and outright lies promoted by shukanshi, Japan's weekly news magazines. Many of the criticisms hit the mark, but it feels like they've mistaken the symptoms for the disease. Simply put, the shukanshi would not be successful if they were not meeting a need for their readers. They reflect deeper problems in Japanese society, and some of its strengths as well.

What's more interesting is seeing the changes in media since the book was published ten years ago. The internet has evolved into a hyper-competitive news market similar to that of the shukanshi, with the corresponding sensationalism and unreliability. Many shukanshi headlines fit in perfectly with today's search engine-optimized clickbait, and I suspect the shukanshi are doing as well online as they are on the newsstands.

In that respect, Gamble and Watanabe's "warning to the west" has come true, but the state of modern media points out the inadequacy of their proposed fixes. Breaking up press clubs and reinforcing journalistic ethics isn't going to alter the fundamental relationship of consumers who want to pay for gossip and producers who want to sell it to them. It feels like we need an informational antibody system to control the viral lies, but how to you devise one that can't be corrupted and turned against the truth?

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little repetitive in places, but fascinating. The chapters on anti-Semitism in Japan and on the Nanjing Massacre were particularly good.

[Martina Frammartino · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided to read A Public Betrayed after seeing the shameful treatment given by the tabloids to Yuzuru Hanyu, who in addition to being the greatest figure skater of all time is an extraordinary human being, particularly active in charity, a source of inspiration for those who know his history and awarded Japan's highest civilian honor. Even though 20 years have passed, the book is still very relevant, and clearly illustrates a sick system in which tabloids can defame whoever they want with impunity because the laws do not protect their victims. A recommended read, with the hope that awareness of the existence of a huge problem can lead to the drafting of better laws.

[Daniel Simmons]

Good topic, lousy writing. Especially galling is its constant and shameless use of other, better, subtler authorities and texts to try and support its ham handed points. I'd really rather read those other, better, subtler authorities and texts, thanks very much.

[Andre · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting look into the world of Japanese tabloid papers that might still be relevant today even though the media probably changed: In trains and subways, on buses, at the corner newsstand, on the Internet, even in advertisements in the nation's most trusted daily papers, banner headlines attack foreigners and minorities, rewrite history, and misrepresent current events with little regard for consequences.
And when the book states that Japan, after all, is indisputably one of the most powerful nations on earth - a fact too often underestimated and overlooked. I can only add:
Especially when it comes to matters of representation and "cultural appropriation." I came across people acting as if Japan is some marginalized 3rd world country no one ever heard of or that had no impact on popular culture. Of course this wasn’t the only interesting piece of information that you got early on in the book, there was also the fact that it is true that the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan had been almost constantly in power since 1955. That is really odd. And I encountered something familiar when the book mentioned the early cold war years:
Although occupation began with its remarkably altruistic policies of "demilitarization and democratization;' plans were radically shifted around 1947 to meet the U.S. foreign-policy requirements of the early cold war. At the expense of democratic reforms, the United States influenced the Japanese system in a manner that ensured that the .S.-aligned LDP was able to gain dominance.
Memorable early entries were:
The problem, as Katz sees it, is that long after Japan's economy had grown and become robust, its bureaucrats made the error of continuing to apply the same strategies of overprotection. He writes, "The caterpillar, not believing it had turned into a butterfly, refused to leave the cocoon. No wonder it couldn't fly.

When the Japanese describe their country, they will often use the word semai, "narrow:' "cramped;' "crowded:' ...Semai is not a physical property; semai is in the mind. It's the emotional consequence of Japan's rigid systems, which bind individuals and keep out the fresh air of new ideas from abroad.

And there was lots of new things I never knew:
That the Tokugawa Bakufu established isolationism for full control over trade, addressing the fear of Western invasion, eliminate Christianity's influence and to assist authorities in controlling other philosophies, such as Buddhism, is partially new. Apparently they did not want their subjects to conceive of anything greater than their earthly, human leaders.
The Japanese media produced more effective propaganda than Nazi Germany exactly because it wasn't under airtight control.

Safe to say that this makes Japanese media look bad.

But sadly, the book was getting worse over time with all the talk about press clubs. I mean, is it really important to know all this?
Luckily there was some information on politics (like the anti-Americanism, national pride and US influence on the government and media) or otherwise that would have been really boring chapter. Reading this was sometimes hard enough as it is.
I really think this has too much information on the history and environment of the papers. This has interesting information but it almost drowns among all the superfluous stuff. At least that is how I feel about it. Thankfully I was almost a third into the actual text (long bibliography etc.) at this point.

Interestingly, the book brought up the theory of “japanization” of American media. You see in the U.S., there was a good tradition of skepticism toward authorities and officials and a healthy respect for the role of journalism in democratic societies. There were fundamental principles recognized by most good journalists. By the time of this book it seemed that it had become an information industry, not journalism. This situation has become even worse since September 11, 2001. And damn was the book right.

Sadly the book was telling the reader who Simon Wiesenthal was and not saying that he only lend the Simon Wiesenthal Center his name but was never a member or organizer of it. Thereby the author gives a false impression and omits the clashes Wiesenthal had with the center over the years. One issue in particular also betrays the center’s alleged message of tolerance as the center has a bad history of denying the Romani holocaust.

But still, this does tell you about the influence of the Merchant of Venice, common-ancestry theories in which Japanese are claimed to be the descendants of Jews, Japanese are the ancestors of Jews, Japan is an important unnamed biblical place, "The theories derive much of their power, the authors say, from the idea of a divinely "chosen people"-a fundamental tenet of both Judaism and Japanese indigenous beliefs."

For a while the book had gone down so much that I skipped several pages. The rest of the book was luckily a much better to read and I did not feel the urge to skip passages of superfluous information.

So in the end, this book is worth reading but a mixed bag.

[Cris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un excelente libro para entender el papel de los Medios en Japón. Lo más sorpresivo fue encontrar un enfoque realmente claro sobre la gobernanza. El poder está tan disuelto entre capas y capas de burocracia, empresas y políticos que es difícil saber quién está realmente al mando en Japón. Aunque el enfoque de este libro es sobre los medios y como han traicionado la confianza pública en repetidas ocasiones, para dar marco a la explicación el autor abarca temas como: La continuidad de la dominación del proceso político de un único partido, la falta de una fuente clara discernible del poder en Japón, la relativa debilidad de la ley, los controles especialmente fuertes del gobierno japonés sobre el libre mercado, el sobreenfatizar en la producción industrial por sobre otras prioridades y el uso de mitos e idiología falsa para legitimar el mandato.

Estos mitos son claves para entender la mente del japonés promedio:
-Los japoneses son naturalmente armoniosos
-Los japoneses son esencialmente un grupo racial homogéneo
-Hay una dimensión espiritual en "ser japonés"
-Las virtudes más grandes, son las sociales
-Hay valor en aceptar la realidad formal, superficial y falsa
-Japón es también una nación víctima de la segunda guerra mundial, tanto como otras naciones.

Un excelente libro de reflexión que caso por caso nos acerca al como los medios literalmente, traicionan a su público.

[Alex]

A Public Betrayed: An Inside Look at Japanese Media Atrocities and Their Warnings to the West by Adam Gamble (2004)

[Katja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great content, horrible writing.